As a former product manager, management consultant, agilist, and self-confessed questioner of all things, I sometimes catch myself thinking about big, hairy questions scraped straight from the very bottom of the “too hard” basket. On sensible days, I catch these thoughts, acknowledge their existence, and move swiftly on to the next shiny thing in my vicinity. On less-than-sensible days, I latch onto them — give them attention, time, space, and explore them.
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Work differently, start now
Elabor8 was honoured to host Dr. Stephen Mayner in this month’s webinar where he presented key industry insights for ‘Applying the SAFe Dual Operating System to Enable Agility in Government’. In this blog, we revisit some of the highlights. Today, let us revisit some of the highlights in this article.
Meet Craig Harvey
Craig started at Elabor8 as a Senior Consultant and moved into the new Head of Automation role in 2022. We’ve enjoyed watching Craig’s career progress over the years and it’s great to get some insight into what it’s like to work at Elabor8.
Be SAFe and Flow Metrics
Whether you are just emerging from traditional project methods, in the throes of an ongoing Scaled Agile Transformation, or just getting settled into your Scaled Agile Framework for Enterprise Transformation, businesses, operations, and technology leaders need to be laser-focused on understanding how to measure predictability in terms of the flow of value through the system.
Innovation and the Outside Context Problem
Ian Banks defined an Outside Context Problem as “a problem that hits you not only because no one saw it coming, but because it was so far outside your context that no one could have possibly predicted it.” In business, we see this all the time, we call it a “disruption”. Disruptions are the primary business model for aggressive tech-focused startups. They hit organisations hard because they just can’t see it coming. Not that they don’t see it coming, but they can’t.
Measuring Success
Over the last few posts we have been looking at how to set up and fund business technology teams – teams that are directly linked to business functions and provide the technology component of the business as an integral part of the business rather than something provided by a separate IT group. These teams are funded by the business on an ongoing basis in order to deliver business outcomes.
Value Stream Based Funding Model
The inability to effectively fund long lived business technology teams is often the single biggest impediment to making a change within a business. In this blog, David Martin explains how you can move away from a project-based funding model and move into a value stream based funding model – a major rethinking of how funding works with huge benefits.
Lean-Agile Leadership Call to Action
Having the whole organisation trained in lean/agile ways of working is important because it provides a tangible roadmap for leading organisational change. It bridges the gaps between functional silos with a common organisational language, basic shared skills and common knowledge of the concepts and an understanding of the ‘why’.
OKRs: How to make them actually work
Poorly used, OKRs end up miring staff in confusion, or just being a re-branded list of KPIs that achieve nothing. So how can you approach OKRs in a way that emphasises the good and avoid the bad? Here’s our Consultant’s, Nick Payne, opinionated take on the subject.
How to best structure your Business Technology teams
In part one, we looked at why the old pattern of business and IT as separate entities is no longer appropriate for organisations today. In this article, we are going to look in more detail at how these new business technology functions should be organised.
Is it time to reimagine your IT department
While the idea of an IT department feels quite modern, the actual idea is pretty old. In the 60s and 70s, these systems were big and complex. Fast-forward 30 years and things are different.
We still talk about “business” and “IT” but that’s no longer really the case. Everything you do in your business relies on IT to happen. IT no longer supports your business. IT is your business.
Lean-Agile Leadership at all levels is about empowering those doing the work
Leadership had to take the wheel immediately. Working with SAFe Program Consultants (SPCs), a pragmatic curriculum of agile classes were implemented. Over the course of a fiscal quarter, everyone could have productive conversations, plan together and prioritise accordingly to the needs of the enterprise goals and market opportunities. One Product Owner even used her budget to fly dev team members into the PI Planning from across the continent!